


sleepy-time for kinderguardians

by Omeganixtra



Series: Destiny Fictober 2019 [8]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Drunken silliness, F/M, Fictober 2019, but it's very much true, cayde is utterly besmitten, drinking at 3am in the tower's bar, guardians are the worst insomniacs, the guardian is simply indulging him and doesn't believe him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-12-13 22:24:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21005129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omeganixtra/pseuds/Omeganixtra
Summary: “You’re drunk,” she notes and his vision stands still long enough for him to register the frown marring her wonderfully innocent features.“Yeah,” he says, dumbly, because it’s nothing but the utter truth.





	sleepy-time for kinderguardians

**Author's Note:**

> day 8: "Can you stay?"

Insomnia is an old friend to most Guardians, be they young or old.

To Cayde-6 she is an old mistress that he keeps returning to, no matter how many times he vows to leave her. Somehow it keeps happening and somehow it always hurls him searching in the nearest direction for a bar.

The one hidden in the Tower is his usual go-to. Of course, he can go anywhere he wants but the Tower’s Guardians-only bar always somehow manages to drag him inside, sit his ass down at the bar and stare blankly at the bottles behind it until the frame bartender finally comes out to take his order.

And that’s where he is now.

Just sitting at the same fucking bar at fuck o’clock in the evening or morning or whenever it is, staring straight ahead into the glass of Exo-liquor that he ordered a few moments ago.

By the Light, but this is fucked up.

It always starts the same, the dream or nightmare or whatever the fuck it is.

He downs the shot, grimaces at the sour, synthetic taste that fills his mouth and overfloods his sensors. It doesn’t make him refrain from ordering another.

It continues like that for a while. He keeps staring at the shot in front of him. He keeps downing it like a thirsting man drinking water for the first time in _days_. He keeps ordering new ones.

In the dream he’s always walking. Walking, walking, walking for what seems like forever. And sometimes he sees people that he knows, knew, will get to know. He likes it when Andal appears, all crooked smiles and patchy beard and warm eyes—likes it a lot less when Andal crumbles in front of him and is nothing but a smoking, bleeding bullet-riddled corpse of dea—

At some point everything becomes comfortably fuzzy and it almost feels as if he can actually get some nice, dreamless rest for once in his fucking pathetic existence.

A hand falls on his shoulder and Cayde spins in his chair, just about ready to kill with one hand on his knife and the other clenching his now-empty glass tight enough to probably crack it.

“Cayde?”

There’s a tense moment where he doesn’t recognize who is standing there in front of him. All that he sees is a blurry outline of dark hair, dark eyes and pale skin but then he _remembers_, _recognizes_ who it is and a wheeze leaves him as vents open to let out the alcoholic steam that is building up inside of his systems.

“Meera?”

His voice is slurring. That is _very_ unbecoming of him, he decides, because Cayde is her _boss_, her Vanguard and staunch protector through thick and thin and—and he is _ridiculously drunk_ right now. Eh, fuck it. He can survive being a teeny tiny bit drunk.

“You’re drunk,” she notes and his vision stands still long enough for him to register the frown marring her wonderfully innocent features.

“Yeah,” he says, dumbly, because it’s nothing but the utter truth.

He is drunk as a skunk.

Huh, would you look at that…

“What are you even doing here this late?” she continues and starts to withdraw her hand. Cayde growls something unintelligible at her and snatches it right back, cradling it against his cheek. “Sir, it’s three in the morning.”

“Wha’re _you_ doin’ here, hmm? Y’should be sleepin’,” he grunts and leans towards her, his glass forgotten on the table. “‘S sleepy-time for kinderguardians.”

She lets out a soft laugh at his antics—at least that’s what he _presumes_ that she does—and then her hand is gently wrestled out of his grasp to instead go between his arm and chest to haul him from the chair.

“It’s sleepy-time for Vanguards as well, sir,” she mutters and somehow manages to coax him off the chair without actually falling backwards from the sudden increase in weight. “And for the record, I think I’ve gotten past being a ‘kinderguardian’ as you put it.”

Behind the two of them he can hear the muted beeping from the barkeep. Everything else is just a nice, blurry mix of fuzzy vision and dull noises.

Her grip guides his arm over her shoulders and Cayde’s remaining free arm goes up to cup her cheek almost automatically. There is a brief, somewhat tense, moment where the two of them stare directly into each other’s eyes.

“Uh, sir, what—”

“D’you know that you’re my fav’rite?” he asks and his thumb goes back and forth on her cheek. “B’cause you _are_! You took down a fuckin’ _Archon_, you saved us from the Darkness and you’re a Hunter, too!”

“I had a good teacher, sir,” Meera smiles at him and oh, but that does funny things to his stomach right now, and that’s not the alcohol talking. “Now, I think that it’s time for you to head back home.”

“Why, Lady Guardian, so _forward_,” he snickers when she tightens her grip on him. “I’d never have taken _you_ for a—” he is interrupted by a heaving sensation in the back of his throat that has him bend out over the floor and throwing up a vaguely sizzling puddle of bright green Exo-liquor.

“By the Light, that’s disgusting,” she wheezes for a moment before attempting to get a better grip on him.

“Lady… Guardian…” Cayde drags out each word as if he wants to taste them. Then he scowls as realization sweeps over him. “Fucking Hell, Saint was right.”

“Hmm?” Meera asks as she steers the two of them out of the bar. The bartender frame is kind enough to hold the door open as she gets the two of them out onto the intersecting hallways and closed trader booths for the day.

“Fucking Titans,” Cayde grumbles as he stumbles along with her. One of his hands keep trying to stroke her cheek. It’s so soft and smooth, he thinks, and the grumble transforms into a breezy smile instead. “He was right ‘bout you!”

“Saint?” she repeats and one of her eyebrows rise up. “You mean as in ‘Saint-14’? He’s been gone for decades, sir.”

“Absolutely bonkers man, Mee,” Cayde crows. “But he kept bein’ _right_, ‘nd tha’s the important part.”

“Of course he did, sir,” she nods and then they’re moving again.

He’s drunk, so fucking drunk, that even the vents in his system are having a hard fucking time coping with the amount of alcohol that he’s drunk through the small hours of the morning. Time passes, he knows that it does as he is guided back to the Vanguard quarters, but he’s still drunk enough that he’s not quite sure if they are walking for hours and seconds. All that he can focus on in Meera. How her hair looks in the moonlight, how her nose flushes such a cute shade of red from the winter-cold winds howling through the Tower, how she’s laughing because of something that he sai—oh, did he say that out loud?

“Yes, you did,” she laughs and then they come to a stop.

Oh, he’s home.

“That you are, sir,” Meera nods and wrangles one of his hands up to the entry station.

A beep, ID-scan and gust of icy wind later the two of them are standing in his quarters. Cayde has no fucking idea of how he’s still standing.

Meera—sweet, magnificent girl that she is—eases him onto the couch. Cayde just so happens to forget to let go of her, and she is therefore hauled along with him, landing on top of him with a quiet ‘oof’ and looking quite lovely as the moonlight sneaks in past his old, shitty blinds.

She looks positively perplexed as she’s lying there on top of him, and ain’t that a nice feeling, but still… so lovely.

“I get dreams from time to time,” he mumbles and looks up at her with lazy eyes. His mind is starting to get hazy in that nice way it always does before he’s about to sleep. “They keep me up. Keep me drinkin’.”

“Plenty of Guardians have dreams that keep them drinking, sir,” Meera smiles that cute smile of hers and put a nice, warm hand on his cheek. “Now, you should go to sleep in your bed and not here on your couch.”

“Yeah,” he agrees and tugs at her, his eyes close as he tries to get her closer. “I should…”

“And for that to happen, you need to let go of me.”

Cayde’s eyes snap open. This close he can see the shine of them paint her face a soft blue color. “Can you stay?”

“T-This isn’t appropriate, sir…”

“Fuck appropriate,” he snaps and looks up at her, brow-plates forming a frown. “I want you to stay here to sleep, not for a tumble. Now, _that_ ain’t appropi—appro—ap—that ain’t proper. I’m a better man than _that_.”

“I know that you are, sir,” Meera nods and she smiles her smile. “I know.”

“Stay here,” he pleads. “Pretty please? I’ll tell you stories of back when I used to run with my old gang, _promise_!”

Her eyebrow floats up towards her hairline at that, but Cayde knows an entranced woman when he sees one.

Well, either that or the booze is still going _strong_.

“Really?”

“Cross my heart’n everythin’,” he vows, solemnly. Then immediately tries to haul her even flusher against him than she already is.

She laughs at his antics and pulls away, and in his booze-addled state Cayde doesn’t quite manage to get a proper grip on her.

“Go to _sleep_, Cayde. I’ll be here in the morning,” she beckons and pulls him from the couch.

“Promise?” he croons and collapses half against her as tiredness and drunkenness finally catches up with him.

“I promise.”

He goes to sleep after that, and in the morning when he stumbles out of the bedroom, bedraggled and nursing a killer hangover it is to find Meera sitting in his kitchenette with a cup of coffee in one hand and a waiting plate of scrambled eggs with bacon waiting for him.

She looks up at him when he comes out and smiles.

“So, about those tales of yours…”


End file.
